Good books/tips on management

[malvolio]

It's quite clear to anyone with a modicum of common sense, and any degree of management ability, that the OP is clearly out of his depth, as I suspect you might be, based on your level of supportive comment.

Which I'm afraid speaks volumes for your management skills.

The naivety of the original post really should send a message to the OP that he/she is out of their depths for the role which they find themselves in, and frankly should be embarrassed at having to ask this type of question in a public forum. Your support of it says it all.

My original response to the effect that the OP is neither suited to staff recruitment nor staff management, stands, but this is just 'mho' based on what I've read on here, of course.

To precis, "Walk away, you're not good enough." Brilliant advice. Useless, but brilliant. Wish I'd thought of it.

[northernladuk]

Think it is my turn to have a pop at this one. I would have responded to BrianP but it appears he was one of pacharans sockies so has had his marching orders so can ignore anything he said.

Oh... and Northernrampage I think you will find is not a he.. but moving on...

I've sat on the fence on this one. My initial thoughts are that there are only one type of manager that is worse than a bad one/inexperienced and that is one that manages from a book, quoting theory and trying to apply it without fully understanding the situation and outcome....

That said, you have to start somewhere but to me, to manage properly is a career, not a side skill. Unfortunately the whole thing of getting good at what you do so you move in to management is flawed as explained by the Peter Principle which says

The Peter Principle states that "in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence", meaning that employees tend to be promoted until they reach a position in which they cannot work competently.

I cannot give NR advice as I don't think a general book will not help your situation one iota. The only thing that will is to read up, continually work at the skills, fail at this and learn from it and then become a skilled manager in a few years. You cannot learn motivation, self perpetualisation and empowerment from a book. It is a thinking style.

In the short term what I would advise you do is think about where you are having a problem and research that, NOT take a stab at the whole thing.

If you are struggling with conflict look for Thomas and Kilmann's 5 styles of dealing with conflict, if it is changing the research Pugh's Principles of Change and so on. That will give you a framework and ideas of how to approach your situation.

You could think about Belbin's team roles and see if you can identify this guys strengths and work on them.

Also if it is motivation look at Frederick Herzberg's motivation and hygiene factors. Not everyone wants to be micro managed and will work better hands off, not everyone wants to be given a list of tasks, they will work better if they own a solution, not everyone like being given tasks so ask him what he thinks, guide him to come up with the idea of the task you want him to do and then let him run with it as if it was his idea and so on.

[malvolio]

Which is all solid information and should be heeded. Except most (but not all) of the team literature is about building teams and motivating them, focusing on getting the right personality and skills mix, not patching broken ones. Be sure you're aware of the differences.

However I stick to the "I want this by then please", followed by "Let's examine why you didn't manage it" followed by "How are we going to do it better next time" approach. And note the use of "we" - your team is your responsibility.

[northernrampage]

thank you Northernladuk and Malvolio, it's been a v. useful thread for me.

It's definitely the areas around conflict I find hard, so I'll look into that. Along with keeping up team motivation and being more responsible for the members of it, can't just ignore the issues any longer. The person who works for me does have some strengths, so I'll recognise those while working on the other areas (and my management skills!).

[Umbongoo]

Seems it's experience you're lacking, but you can only get this thru getting more experience and learning as you go. Seems you're doing this as we speak. B good to know how this pans out for u.